Editorial Reviews

Filipino director Brillante Mendoza brings a frank, gritty immediacy to SERBIS, a multi-character, day-in-the-life portrait of a family-run movie house in the Philippines. Only this isn't your typical movie house. It's actually a downtrodden venue that shows graphic double features and allows the clientele to make their own sexual connections in the dark shadows. Today is a very important day, for Nanay Flor, the family matriarch, is going to discover if she won a years-in-the-making bigamy case against her husband. Meanwhile, her children are involved in dramatic situations of their own. Alan has just learned troubling news about his girlfriend, and Nayda is married but attracted to her cousin Ronald. As the day develops and the verdict comes down, the Pinedas struggle to focus on the daily tasks associated with the theater, even as their own personal conflicts threaten to overwhelm them. SERBIS provides a realistic, unflinching glimpse into this hyper-sexualized world.

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With little characterization and even less plot, Service is a quirky yet engaging little oddity of a film fro the Philippines, directed by Brillante Mendoza, that has as its central character the Family Theater - a once-grand movie palace now covered in graffiti and faded, peeling film posters advertising the theater's second-most popular attraction: porn.

The theater, run by the equally once-grand Pineda family (who also lives above the theater), has as its main attraction the clientele the adult films draw; young street hustlers, gay men, and horny married men hook up with the dark confines and dank hallways of the faded and jaded theater, often with what's going on off-screen more exciting than the actual double features shown.

Service, which depicts little more than the family members' lives in connection with the theater that has become their lives, follows continuously as the family deals with infidelity and divorce, borrowing money to help keep things running, young love, grossly overflowing toilets, casual sex, boils, raising children, even a runaway goat ... all while somehow keeping the movie house running so the family itself can survive. In the unrated version a few of the sex scenes are unapologetically graphic, and the film overall often plays more like a reality show, with the camera hurrying to keep up as different situations (I hesitate to use the word "subplots" here, as there is really not a plot, period) unfold in an "average" day of trying to run a porn theater. Director Brillante Mendoza captures the gritty, grimy world of the theater perfectly, the graininess on-screen giving the film its raw texture - and the strikingly handsome Coco Martin, as young Alan, provides the ray of hope in the film for the Pineda family's future, when all is said and done. I'd heard a lot about Martin, prior to Service, but this was my first time seeing his work, and he alone makes the film worth watching.

Though even overall, I found Service intriguing and unique. While definitely not for everyone, and quirky to the point I am not even 100% sure why I liked it, this is one film I could watch again ... even to the point of purchasing on DVD. Even among the grit and grime and seediness, somehow there feels like a bit of a gem here.

I like Brillante Mendoza films because of their realism. His films pull back the curtain on a side of the Philippines that most would not want the world to see.

I remember watching a news story from the Philippines last year about police raiding a theater such as the one depicted in this story. The setting for the movie is an old movie house that has seen better days.

The owner is on the verge of bankruptcy and the once large movie house (that is the setting for this story) is deteriorating. The only thing keeping the place open is the owner's ability to borrow money.

The main customers are gays and call boys who use the theater for anonymous sexual rendevous.

Serbis is movie that is set in a theater and its dwellers. Serbis as I understood could stand for the many gay prostitutes that hang out in the vicinity of the theater and offer their services as male prostitutes.It shows the lives of its inhabitants and their problems. The movie theater is called Family and its residents are Nanay Flor is the mother who lives with her daughter, Neyda, is her son-in-law, Lando, the daughter Jewel, Alan, a billboard painter and Ronald, the projectionist. These characters are not developed fully and one does not get to fully know them. The theater shows porn movies and serves as a haven for gay sex, there are a lot of sex scenes, some of which are very graphic. While the main story is that Nanay Flor is trying to sue her husband and send him to prison for infidelity. The other characters and their daily lives become the center of the action but in a half baked manner. This is not a very watchable movie but does not become boring. The director has captured the heat and the squalor of the place very well and wished that he had also focused on character development. Also the shooting is very amateurish because the bystanders are looking at the camera and staring while the lead performers are performing. I gave it only two stars. 3/9/10